Little Cropping Exercise

Picture from the Cruise Day show in town this weekend

I like exercises. I used to teach, and I liked devising exercises that might stand a chance of shaking my students out of their "usual tricks" as my own teacher Frank DiPerna used to say, and help them to see and organize pictures in different ways.

I have a sort of faith about this. It goes like this: I believe that the mind does a lot of our work for us, behind the scenes—or behind the senses, so to speak—and if you present the mind with a problem, then just butting up against those problems will cause new and different things to happen in your regular everyday work. And it doesn't really matter if you "succeed" at the exercise—even if you just struggle with it for a while, it can still have a good effect. The idea is that the mind will solve the problem for you; all you have to do is present the problem to your mind. It will do its work independently. In fact, it might even be better if you're not facile enough to succeed at solving the problem right away. A recalcitrant problem presents the mind more clearly with a challenge.

I'm not sure I'm right about this, by the way. It's just what I believe.

Anyway, think about cropping. It used to be that cropping entailed a fair amount of work. You might draw lines with a grease pencil on tiny little 35mm contact proofs, then try to duplicate that composition with the projected negative image on the easel; or maybe you started with a print and drew on that. Anyone remember those manual cropping angles that consisted of two "squares" (I mean like a carpenter's square) connected by a metal rod? The only one I could find is this discontinued "Scaleograph" at B&H, which at least lets you see what it looks like. I used to take bond paper and just move the sheets around to show different areas of a workprint.

Actual cropping is much easier now—first we got zoom lenses, then image editing programs, and now we can do it with quick and simple pinching and spreading commands on our phones or tablets using our fingers. Whee. It's nice. But the problem of learning to see crops, also called details, remains. You look at a scene, and there are thousands of compositions possible from just one standpoint, and billions of potential compositions if you're willing to move around. How do you process that into a successful picture? ...In the time you've got available?

(I gotta watch it that I don't amplify this topic outward and start talking about composing in general....)

Anyway, here's one exercise that I do a fair amount. I do it just for fun, not for results—not to make finished work. Take an expansive picture of an overall scene. Then play a little game of "find a picture" inside the frame. You can do it right on the back of a phone or tablet, or you can do it back at your computer. I almost always do it on my phone (I don't do it with real cameras for some reason).

So here's the whole frame that the composition above comes from:

(You might like the whole frame better in this instance, but that's not the point.)

So then what I'll do is to try to imagine what I would have needed to do to get an actual usable frame of the smaller detail. In this case, I would have had to enlist the man's cooperation, because his foot was only on the ground for a second or two, and I would have had to have a longer lens or a zoom on a bigger camera...or, in other words, I simply couldn't have gotten the top shot. That's often the case when I play this little game. I have to shrug and stay "Oh well."

But because I do this a fair amount, I'm always seeing pictures within scenes. I'll sort of use the phone as a notepad for investigating pictures I might have taken. That are there—it's just that I can't get them.

Anyway I've been wondering whether it might be fun to use one of the higher-resolution cameras and see if I could actually play this game for real. This picture was taken with an outdated iPhone 13; if I had taken it with a 47-MP Nikon Z7II, would I have enough information to make the detail into a real picture? I don't know. I've never tried a camera with that much resolution.

Anyway, I have fun with this. Photography for me is closest to a kind of play, if I'm honest. Does futzing around with various croppings make me a better observer? I think it does, but I could be wrong. In any event, it's easy these days, and that's a pleasure. Not like it used to be.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Franz Amador: "It’s interesting to me that you chose to include that bit of tree at the top. My instinct is to pull the top down until the hedge is an unbroken backdrop. Are you using the tree trunk to mirror the foot?"

Mike replies: That's a choice, and it would be okay for someone else. I've never liked cropping to be too fastidious. When I first contemplated these issues in my youth, I decided we have a tendency to want to exclude everything that isn't clean and "designy," and that you should let some of the world in, even if it's only implied. I'm actually just as fastidious as anyone else, but I tend to let a little messiness remain. I also don't mind pictures with my shadow in them, with bits of a set left in, that sort of thing. On the other hand I go too far with this sometimes. I delivered a proof of a student portrait of a high school girl with her bra strap showing, and the mother was appalled. Oops. Should have known better.

Tom Passin: "A somewhat related exercise can be fun and instructive if you can go with a friend and both shoot the same scene in your own way. This might mean moving to get a different angle, using a different zoom factor, or what have you. Later, each edit the other's photos, or just a few anyway. Crop to suit your own fancy. Share your results with each other, or even do them together. It's interesting how differently two people can see the same scene. You can learn a lot."

Mike replies: Ctein and one of his friends did a whole series of pictures this way, matter together for an exhibition.

MikeR: "I like to tell people, 'I play with photography.' Keeps me from taking myself too seriously, and lowers the expectations others might have of me (like, because I have about 20 cameras)."

Gavin Paterson: "I do a lot of cropping on wildlife and botanical subjects, and have found that Topaz AI is terrific on interpolating details that are often 'soft' after the crop. "

Geoff Wittig: "I have a powerful aversion to cropping, which I think just reflects my history with photography. I started out shooting 35mm slide film after seeing an exhibition of Jim Brandenburg's brilliant work, including his iconic aerial image of an Oryx on a sand dune in Namibia. Brandenburg's prints were huge, like 24x36", and demonstrated the quality that could be wrung out of a well-exposed 35mm slide.

"So I did my best to squeeze out as much image quality as I could from 35mm slide film. Good lenses, heavy tripod, cable release, careful focus and exposure, low ISO. I toyed with trying medium format, but fortunately digital came along. Early high end digital bodies like Canon's EOS-1Ds had smooth tonal gradation compared to film, but were still resolution-limited, so, again, cropping meant throwing away data unnecessarily. So it's now an unconscious reflex for me to compose very tightly within that 35mm frame.

"Of course, now that cameras have become absurdly good, this is really no longer helpful. For the past nine years I've been shooting with an increasingly elderly but high resolution EOS-5DsR and I still tend to obsess about resolution and image quality as a reflex. (Canon for some reason has refused to produce a modern replacement, to my great disappointment. But I digress.) Using every pixel still feels like being virtuous.

"Recently I've been photographing more casually, hand-held with smaller Fujifilm bodies (along with drawing and sketching) to provide raw material for paintings. The little X-T5 is perfect for this. My reflexive habit of composing very tightly is now becoming a problem, since I end up limited in how I can crop without losing something important. I'm trying to loosen up a bit...but it's like trying to change your handwriting."

Peter Wright: "That the picture holds up at all with that amount of cropping shows us just how capable phone cams have become. Perhaps all you need is a newer iPhone?"

Comments

[Stan B.]

The game I play is to figure the crop from jump in camera, so I pay just as much attention to the corners of the frame as I do to the center. Do I have all I need to make it the most efficient at the angle most effective? Is there anything extraneous detracting; does it all serve to complement the meat and potatoes in the center as much as possible? When done before shooting, you previsualize more accurately, and second guess less when options are significantly more limited during editing.

[Sean]

By ‘independently,’ I assume you’re not talking dualistically. For routines and familiar environments, it's hugely inefficient to bring automated responses into conscious awareness. You have a deep knowledge of photography, practice and theory

I suspect that what you’re describing is experience in instinct’s clothing, especially when it doesn’t require top-down control. Minds appear to work through Bayesian inference, meaning your response to stimuli is influenced by your priors, which will update when expectations are violated. The stronger the prior, the more likely a certain response will be. A mind encountering a problem for the first time will need to draw on higher cognitive processes. Your conscious awareness might feel like the CEO behind the eyes, but we are not independent of our brains. We are our brains

[James]

I used to use two L shaped pieces of matboard. :-) I sort of miss it. I like everything in 4:3 and printed at 12 x 16. So now I just set my X-T5 or X100VI to 4:3 and frame accordingly when I am taking the photo.

[jim]

To Crop or not to crop, since I'm way old school and only (almost) use 35 or 50 lenses Cropping is often to remove distrations but then I think hmmm.. leave it in. Does it matter who cares.... jim

[JOHN B GILLOOLY]

One of my favorite things is to happen upon a scene that I know is rich in opportunity and just work it. Walk around it with a 35mm lens. Put that away, walk around with a 135mm. Just spend some time and your vision of what is around and available just sort of evolves. New compositions become available.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Why spend time on such decisions today?

https://petapixel.com/2024/06/18/neurapix-launches-the-worlds-first-personalized-ai-cropping-tool/

😳

[Moose]

"I'm always seeing pictures within scenes."

This is a definition of my dominant way of seeing photos. And not just with a camera, I'm regularly pointing out unnoticed details to others, both in life and on the screen.

I tend to notice/see small parts of the visual field.A a result, probably the majority of my shots are long tele and macro.

I also do a fair amount of cropping in post, but it all starts with the exposure.

Git me out in the world with my Oly 100-400 with 1.4x teleconverter and a macro capable shorter zoom, and I'm a happy camper.

One of the advantages of the 100-400 + TC is that the close focus remains the same as the FL gets longer.

I suspect that 1100 mm eq. would have "got your shot".

[Rob de Loe]

Cropping is one of those Mars vs. Venus things. I'm from whichever of those planets doesn't like to crop.

I do all my cropping before I press the shutter button. I'm also fussy about edges. If I have to crop, it's because I made a mistake, or (very rarely) because my longest lens wasn't long enough and there's something tiny and important that is lost.

I've shared this predilection with people from the other planet. They think there's something wrong with me. As far as they are concerned, the image recorded at the press of the shutter is simply a starting point for exploring the potential photographs it might contain. The idea of sticking with the base aspect ratio the camera's engineers created for the camera strikes them as beyond ridiculous.

The people from that planet will like and understand your game. On my planet, not so much. Our motto is, "Choose your perspective, then choose your focal length".

[Kye Wood]

You need to make and sell prints of that photo.

How can I be the only one who thinks it's a great photograph?

[Mark Sampson]

Your cropping makes that shot good. Car shows are fun; you see some beautiful things, but are terrible places to make good photographs. Lovely subjects in unfortunate surroundings (but where else will you ever find a classic DeSoto like that?)
At least 99% of all my many car show photographs, over decades, are merely records of the cars on the day. Which is fine- but here you've made a fine photograph from what had been just another record shot.
You did get a little help from the imaginative Virgil Exner, Chrysler Corporation's chief designer in the late '50s, but there's no harm in that.
I prefer to compose in-camera, but so what? I'm here to make good pictures... whatever it takes.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I'm definitely a cropper, despite the time working for the Alumni Publications Office (in college) where everything was printed full-frame.

Lately, I find I'm not paying as much attention to standard aspect ratios, even (printing bigger, and with wider borders, makes that more comfortable for me). (1:1 is the one I use most often! If I find I'm coming close to a square composition, I'll often see if I can make it work exactly square, and if so, I'll often go with that. It's not a high percentage of the total photos, but it's a lot of the crops that are a standard aspect ratio.)

Very few really cool images out there in the world are exactly 3:2 (or 4:3) anyway. And, when shooting people candidly, wasting time fiddling with precise edges usually loses you the shot you were after. Much better to frame a bit loosely around what you think you're shooting, if it moves!